The Perfect Birthday
Two weeks ago I sat at my kitchen table with my midwife. Since our first visit in April we have always started every appointment by discussing how I was feeling. Not only my physical symptoms, but my mental, emotional, and spiritual ones as well.
If you had been a close spectator to this pregnancy of mine you would know I have been extremely ill: fighting hyperemesis gravidarum (excessive vomiting in pregnancy) in the first half of this pregnancy and unrelenting nausea in the second half. Other than that I have had a textbook healthy pregnancy, but it has worn me out.
As we sat at my table, my midwife started asking me questions like every other visit and I almost started crying out of frustration. I was days away from my due date and had spurts of contractions here and there, but no concrete signs of labor. I expected this baby days ago. I know it sounds stupid, but I’ve never wanted a December baby. I had my reasons, valid or not, and was a little on edge about it when I found out I was pregnant in April. I made peace with it by putting my own expectations on the matter: I would have the baby at the end of November or the beginning of December and my baby would have a birthdate far enough from Christmas to be within my comfort zone.
Here I sit on December 16th, 9 days from Christmas and over week past my due date. I am tired of friends and family “checking in” for signs of labor. I am tired of struggling to put socks and shoes on. I am tired of having to put effort into just standing up. I am tired of being pregnant.
You may be thinking “they let you go that far past your due date!?”. It’s a common exclamation I hear about my daughter who was born at 41w3d. For those of you that don’t have much medical knowledge, in America that is considered “late” and most doctors will pressure moms into artificially inducing before that.
I am against that for many reasons:
Artificial induction often leads to increased interventions and therefore increased complications.
I trust my body will go into labor when it is ready and pressuring it to do anything else could lead to unfortunate results.
My baby will send signals to my body when he or she is ready, which will start labor. My daughter was only just over 6lbs at birth, despite being “late”. She was super healthy, just very small and needed a little extra time.
40 weeks of pregnancy is just an average. Anything between 37 and 42 weeks is perfectly normal and healthy.
By choosing to take any interventions off the table that would give me an exact birthday of my choosing for my baby, I am faced with the consequence of having to wait.
Knowing my choice has lead to waiting, I am taking comfort in the wisdom my midwife shared with me two weeks ago at my kitchen table. After I vented my frustrations to her she shared a verse from Psalms 139. Verse 16 says:
“All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be”.
Every person that is living or has ever lived or ever will has had a perfect birthday. God picked out their first day outside their mothers womb, He knew their last day and He has known every day between.
He knows which day my baby will be born. He knows which day I will give birth. It seems hard to wait as I sit on my couch twiddling my thumbs, but there is a perfect time for my baby and I to meet on this side.
I can trust my body to yet again birth a baby in the perfect time.
I can trust my baby, that they know the perfect moment when they are ready to meet me.
Most of all, I can trust the Lord, that He has a perfect birthday, a perfect birth, and a perfect baby all picked out for me. I just need to trust His timing in the waiting.
